


It Is Said

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: SGA - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-18
Updated: 2010-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:43:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The found the Runner at nightfall.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	It Is Said

They found the Runner at nightfall, their horses crying and shying from the smell. "I will take him to our tent," Dian's father said, bumping his shoulders against the others' lantern poles.

"We should leave him here," Yerkin dared say, as his horse danced uneasily. "We should move the juuz from this place and leave him for the Wraith."

"Move where, in winter?" Dian's father asked. "It is said that kindness to a traveler honors the juuz."

Yerkin stood in his saddle. "This is no traveler, and death is no honor. This is a Runner, a Wraith-bringer. We should run, too."

With a grunt, Dian's father began to lift the Runner's great shoulders from the snow; Dian hesitated a moment, then dismounted clumsily to help him. "We will give him rest for one night, and if he dies we will make his pyre."

They put out the lanterns and made a sled of the poles; Dian tied one side to his saddle, and the other to his father's, and they rode slowly back to the juuz.

+

Dian watched his mother and sisters as they made a bed for the Runner, laying out pallets and quilts for him. His mother sent the girls away before she began to pull down the Runner's filthy clothes. "Take these, Dian," she said, struggling off scratched armor, a scuffed hostler, a sword. "I won't have such weapons in my house. I should never have such weapons in my house."

"Kindness to travelers--" Dian says.

"This one is no traveler," she snaps. "And a poor guest brings the host no gift."

Dian put the weapons among the firewood outside the yurta, and stopped to admire them against the white snow. After a while, he pulled down a saddle blanket from the line and wrapped the weapons in it, to protect leather and metal.

After a while, he found the small straps at the top of the scabbard, and loosed them. He pulled a finger-width of the sword free. It was white and shining, keen as wind.

+

His parents spoke sharply, and eventually his mother took the girls to her sister. Dian, his father, and his brother Janar took watch, to see if the Runner would die. (Janar cried, and wanted to go with the girls, then slept.)

The Runner was a huge man, with dusky skin and long matted locks, and Dian wondered if all outworlders looked so. He had many scars on him, some white and some brown, and his skin stretched over muscle and bone like a drumhead. Dian wondered if he had seen many Wraith and if he'd killed any. Dian watched the Runner while the others slept, and wondered how he had come so far from the Ancester's Well, and where he would go next. He wondered about the bright sword outside. He wondered about a tattoo on his neck, but when he touched it the Runner seized his arm.

"I'm sorry!" Dian squeaked.

"Where am I?" the Runner asked. His eyes were pale when they opened, but he did not look left or right. Perhaps he had gone snow-blind.

"We call this place Koek-Kol," he answered. "I'm Dian."

The Runner let him go and tried to sit up. He could not. "I shouldn't be here."

"You're sick," Dian said. "Stay. My father says we'll take you to the Well in the morning."

The Runner turned his head towards the sound of Dian's voice. "Why?"

"Kindness to a traveler honors the juuz," Dian answered warily.

"I'm no traveler," the Runner growled.

+

When the Wraith had gone, Dian found his father's body under the fallen yurta. He found Janar alive, hiding among the broken poles, and sat down with him. Snow began to fall.

Yerkin came, leading a lame horse. "Does your father live?" he called.

Dian shook his head and wiped his eyes.

"Your mother is taken," he said. "Your sisters are slain."

"The Runner is gone."

"Would that the Wraith had taken him," Yerkin said, spitting on snow and ashes. It left a red stain.

Dian covered his father's body with a blanket. He stretched another over the broken poles, where Janar still sat. "Sit, Yerkin. I'll make a fire."

"Your yurta is not fit for guests, boy," Yerkin sneered.

"A kindness to travelers honors the juuz," Dian said.

Yerkin spat red again. "Am I a traveler now among my own people?"

Dian stirred the ashes for an ember. "We're all travelers."


End file.
